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  1. #1

    Was Mists of Pandariz that liked?

    From what I recall, MoP was the most disliked reveal trailer on their youtube channel because of Pandaren.
    https://youtube.com/watch?v=nyeZ8khSEC0

    I see that youtube hid the dislikes now but I rechecked last week and it had close up to 36k dislikes (!).

    Not to mention that the new expansion barely brought in any new players or older players that quit during Cataclysm.
    https://imgur.com/a/5FGbBOY

    You can see the dropout after the first few months was huge and t continued to drop down until the release of WoD which spiked up the subscriber numbers immensively. (Don't forget Warcraft movie came out at the same time).

    Can we conclude that MoP wasn't that liked by the playerbase? Sure it was good compared to BfA and Shadowlands, but does it show that people are more interested in the "conservative" style of Warcraft; Orcs and Humans too?

  2. #2
    From memory, people hated Panda’s.
    The after release, they hated the dailies.

    Like Legion, my overall memory of MOP is positive, but not in the beginning.
    The story however, was “meh” but it’s all been downhill after Cata IMO.

  3. #3
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    Lucky for everyone, a reveal trailer isn't an expansion. Like ALL expansions during their run there were tons of people who hated it and those who were busy playing it. It's generally well-remembered now but I would agree that the dailies at the start were a mistake; as was the startling appearance of the pandas looking as if they had stepped right out of the frame of the Kung Fu Panda show.

    The Pandaren never bothered me because I'm an adult and not overly worried about giant bears populating an island. Many people think the expansion hit its stride with the 5.1 patch and they wouldn't be wrong.

    What you can conclude is that some people enjoyed it; some people disliked it and there was a 3rd group mostly interested in getting attention that yelled about it on forums for weeks.

    For me, there was a lot to love in that expansion.
    Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2021-07-13 at 10:38 AM.
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  4. #4
    I think the dislikes on the trailer are mainly because people were pissed off about Cataclysm at the time and weren't willing to give Blizzard the courtesy of entertaining a rather wacky idea.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    The Pandaren never bothered me because I'm an adult
    Really?


    Quote Originally Posted by Ivarr View Post
    I think the dislikes on the trailer are mainly because people were pissed off about Cataclysm at the time and weren't willing to give Blizzard the courtesy of entertaining a rather wacky idea.
    People were more pissed off by the Pandaren. Saying that Chen was an easter egg. (Technically he was since he had no dialogue and wasn't a requirement to complete Rexxar's story)
    People were pissed that Blizzard suddenly pulled a whole expansion around them out of nowhere.
    "Easy, cheap pandering to China" was also an argument. As Warcraft was mostly Western, European in its fantasy tropes and concepts until then.

  6. #6
    Beginning was crap, but the later patches were the best WoW had to offer. ToT, timeless isle and SoO were super fun, even though SoO got repetitive because it lasted a year. Also class gameplay was at its best, tanking was fun due to revenge, healing was a bit too easy, though.
    But MoP was the prime of WoW, where the emphasis was put on fun, not balance or any other metric.
    Yes, the "homogenization is bad" crowd might not like it. But MoP was a far cry from the boring builder-spender gameplay we have now in most specs and bring the player, not the class is a vastly superior concept for casual raiders, due to not having to worry about your group comp, but just invite all the guildies and get going.

    Also the cinematography of the Trailer was marvelous. I admit, I hated pandas back then, but the overall theme of the expansion was very well executed. MoP was also probably the most innovative lore expansion, although garrosh's character got butchered.
    Last edited by LordVargK; 2021-07-13 at 10:43 AM.

  7. #7
    MoP was absolutely trashed in the beginning. Mostly from the Kung Fu Panda stuff, as well as complaints that it was only to appease the Chinese market. However the endgame of MoP was where it probably got the most deserved flack, as you had rep grinds gates behind other rep grinds, not to mention said rep grinds ended up being necessary for bonus rolls and the best enchantments.

    I believe the outrage had died down by 5.2 though. That being said 5.3 and 5.4 were notorious for truly starting the entire debate on whether Blizzard was willingly ignoring the Alliance, as that entire patch seemed designed with the Alliance as an afterthought.

    And of course MoP is still the expansion with the longest content drought. The last patch lasted over a year before WoD launched.


    Like most expansions it is only when players look back with rise tinted glasses and forget the boring and annoying bits that the expansion became regarded as the best thing since sliced bread.
    That and of course WoD being a never-ending content wasteland.
    The world revamp dream will never die!

  8. #8
    The theme was heavily critizised, but a lot of it came from people who either had already left the game, or didn't even play and joined the bandwagon.

    The first patch had far too repetitive dailies. But both the Isle of Thunder and the Timeless Isle offered much better daily/weekly content.

    And Siege of Orgrimmar was quite the content drought.

    Other than that, the lore was good, the raids and dungeons were great, and pretty much everything the expansion introduced was kept one way or another.

    Challenge Mode became Mythic+, Flexible Raiding is now used in LFR, Normal and Heroic, the player's farm kind of evolved into Garrisons, Class Halls and now Covenants, and Scenarios became a tool for scripted events at the end of questlines. Even the Training Grounds and the Brawler's Guild could be considered a precursor of the Mage Tower and Torghast in some ways. They also added pet battles, which are now an evergreen form of content.

    No expansion since then has introduced as many -new- features, really.

  9. #9
    It had many problem.
    The trailer was obviously dumb. Beautifull, ok, but dumb.
    The panda joining horde and alliance was also incredibly dumb. I mean they litterally have to kill each other 10 minutes after. The horde side was even worse.
    The panda in pandaria were boring. Chen was boring. He was fun in war3, here, just boring.
    Their whole spirituality was boring.

    The first zone was pretty nice. Pretty much from start to end, and after that... nothing. Story suddenly disapear.

    Still Mogu and Klaxxi were a nice addition.
    TOT and SOO were great.
    And for patches 5.1 was a story one less dumb than what you get now, 5.2 was great with a pseudo server effort. Zone was nice.
    And the timeless island kept people a bit busy. But for far to long.

    So yeah many flaws but classes were pretty great to play.

  10. #10
    Who ever ranks the game after a trailer should be banned ...

  11. #11
    Stop basing everything on YouTube likes/dislikes

  12. #12
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Overlordd View Post
    People were more pissed off by the Pandaren. Saying that Chen was an easter egg. (Technically he was since he had no dialogue and wasn't a requirement to complete Rexxar's story)
    People were pissed that Blizzard suddenly pulled a whole expansion around them out of nowhere.
    "Easy, cheap pandering to China" was also an argument. As Warcraft was mostly Western, European in its fantasy tropes and concepts until then.
    That's just petty crap really.

    I personally don't care about Pandaren, they don't make me cold or warm. And Blizzard putting in Asian themed expansion to further their supposed insidious evil marketing goals did not make me bawl like child either.

    I rejoined WoW at 5.1 after leaving it mid-Cata and overall I really really liked MoP - it was first time Blizzard put completely new lore in World of Warcraft that did not rely on the bones of W3 heroes and stories and in my opinion it was a great success.

    The new regions and lore were amazing and a lot of fun. The specs separation, redesign and streamlining was amazing breath of fresh air compared to Cataclysm's disgusting soup of spells where old systems started to simply implode upon themselves. And of course the visuals and sound went to the whole next level. Thunder Isle, Throne of Thunder, Timeless Isle were some of the greatest hits they ever did as patch content.

    But sure let's toss that all in a garbage bin because of irrational hate towards race you don't like.

  13. #13
    Allegedly Mists did well in Asian territories. But here in the West, Mists was panned pretty heavily on release by a section of the community and even now still gets flak for how the Pandaren were portrayed, introduced, and handled. A lot of the Asian themes were considered too "cutesy" by those who didn't like it. Personally I loved Mists, but your mileage when you ask people about Mists I think can vary. Nowadays the reception leans a lot more positively than it used to. It used to be, especially at the time of Mists, that you wouldn't ever hear anything positive about it at all - except once Throne of Thunder rolled around, this is about when reception had some positive weight to it. But even then, other issues like Thunderforging and such kept people cynical. Even now, people basically only wax positive about Mists in the light of ToT despite the TF system. People seem to be a lot more open about liking the expansion in retrospect due to its overall quality - indeed I personally believe there was a lot to like about Mists, particularly I think class and spec gameplay was pretty good in Mists, but evidently the expansion themes didn't resonate much at all with a certain subsection of the WoW Western demographic, at least.

    So, I dunno, take all that for what it's worth, I guess.

  14. #14
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    scenery was great. ToT and Isle were great fun.
    Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries.

  15. #15
    Mists did not enjoy much, if any hype (which is necessary for population growth). For those that played it though, it was generally fairly liked.

    It had great questing, an incredibly unique style and flavor, and also had some of the best lore across any expansion. While many people weren’t crazy about actually playing pandas, they did help provide a very refreshing atmosphere. The sub races were pretty good too (aside from the Jin yu maybe).

    Also, farming was awesome

    All that was more than enough to give many players fond memories.
    Last edited by someguy233; 2021-07-13 at 11:12 AM.

  16. #16
    MoP had some of the worst marketing they could possibly make. Its first teaser was showing off pandaren performing kung-fu, then when the actual trailer dropped it turned completely goofy the moment Chen appeared and the fighting human and orc instantly turned into a joke. It sure didn't help that the already popular Kung Fu Panda movies were taking off (and no, WC3 did NOT do kung-fu panda first, because the WC3 pandaren had a different style of fighting which involved smashing with kegs and breath fire).

    The expansion itself isn't bad but its theming sure ruined a lot of its potential. The gameplay was solid, I like that they attempted to tell new stories that isn't born from WC3, the zones were mostly beautiful and the questing was fun, but the theming... it was just too much. I think I even like WoD's theme more and would have loved if WoD had the quality of MoP instead. The game also performed significally worse in its opening week when compared to any other expansion, barely making it to 2.7 million while most other expansions reach around 3.3 million in a day.

  17. #17
    The Undying Lochton's Avatar
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    Well. For me, MoP is in my top 3, along with Wrath and Legion.

    It had one of the greatest raids. Brilliant scenery. Great questing. A good flow on the story. The Pandaren, though people's irrational behavior towards them, was a great change of pace to the game.
    Last edited by Lochton; 2021-07-13 at 11:33 AM.
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  18. #18
    Personally I loved MOP alot of people hate it because they just think "Lol kung fu panda" but i loved the art style love the pandaren race one thing i loved about it, is we went in without "Oh shit thats the bad guy" i mean sure they told us garrosh was the end boss, but we went into MOp with no clear "We have to defeat X to save the world" plus i loved the interactions with Wrathion every patch it felt like an evolving story mop to me is in my top 3 fave expansions others being wrath and legion

  19. #19
    Scarab Lord Polybius's Avatar
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    I never liked the aesthetic, and not because of “kung fu panda” lookalike but I just never enjoyed it in any game. Preferred the gothic fantasy touch. That said I put up with it because it meant they’d take inspiration from other sources for future expansions. Most of the raids were interesting. MoP should’ve been where the Orc v Human conflict ended and shift focus to other races and proxy wars.

  20. #20
    It was as near perfect an expansion as we've ever had. The zones were beautiful, the quest quality was overall a step up again from the previous expansions. Highlight was challenge mode dungeons there was agnostic to gear collection and all the raids were good or great.

    Probably the last expansion I fully committed to fully and achieved everything in it, that's how engaging it was for me.

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